Cine Talk

Rani’s weird yet watchable

Somewhere towards the ‘grind’ finale, when you are grinding your teeth in exasperation at the banality of the burlesque, a hideous character named Gagabai is seen slithering, dancing and cavorting all over a set that looks like a psychedelic nightmare-scape from Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D. As this Lady Gaga sings Do do do me to a leery lad who has seen better ‘daze’, the director seems to have completely lost the plot.

Aiyyaa is a film that thrives on the mood of unmitigated zaniness. For those who like their comedy with a heavy layering of wistful fantasy it’s quite an experience. Wacky and funny on the top, the world of the protagonist Meenaxi (Rani Mukerji) is dark and sombre beneath. It’s a tough mood creation marred by the director’s stubborn refusal to let the narrative make up its mind whether it wants to do a homage or a spoof to the fantasy-cinema of the 1980s.

So here’s the thing. Director

Kundalkar, who seems to think wackiness is a tremendous cinematic virtue, begins by showing Meenaxi as a middle class Maharastrian girl constantly fantasising about being in Madhuri Dixit’s and Sridevi’s song sequences from Tezaab and Mr India

But as the narrative groans ahead it is defeated by its own eccentricity. Homage or highdefinition item songs, Rani, by jove, has a ball dancing to the spoofy and the sensuous beats of Amit Trivedi’s mood-perfect tunes. She embraces her character, making Meenaxi’s contradictions and whims her own to the point that we are almost willing to excuse the film’s innate discrepancies and annoying goofiness.

Rani’s played the downmarket dreamer before, in Bunty Aur Babli. Here, she lets the working class wannabe’s imagination take wings to soar eagle-like in the sky that, alas, gets progressively clouded and murky.

Gopal Varma’s Rangeela while her rapport with her trying-hard-tobe-understanding fiance (Subodh Bhave, excellent) harks back to Jaya Bhaduri’s Bole re papihara in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi Subodh Bhave’s description of his love for the cinema of Farooq Shaikh and Deepti Naval with Jagjit Singh’s Tumko dekha to yeh khayaal aaya from the film Saath Saath thrown in for good measure, and with Rani’s character trying hard to follow her fiance’s love for nostalgia, are brilliantly tongue-incheek.

Alas, the film loses any claim to a coherent voice. Meenaxi’s friend Gagabai’s overpowering trashiness and the wheelchaired grandmother’s excessive exuberance set your teeth on edge. Did they really think these over-the-top (and how!) characters would actually appear funny on screen?

What works, and works beautifully, is the central RaniPrithviraj romance. Aiyyaa is all about a girl who longs to escape her garbage dump existence, falls in love with a man who smells good and stalks the scented silent sinister stranger to a finale that is tragically far from ambrosial or enigmatic.

No Hindi film has explored the sensuous aspect of smells so effectively. Every time the South Indian brooder (Prithviraj, effectively in-mood) passes by Rani inhales as though she had just felt eternity in her nostrils.

Also brilliant is Rani’s brief attempts to touch her fantasyman’s Tamilian background by taking a crash course in Chennai etiquette from a cocky Dravidian chaiwalla boy (Pakadi Pandi, superb) and also by gate-crashing into his home to befriend his South Indian mother.

The director messes up a chance